A New England Girlhood, Outlined from Memory (Beverly, MA)

The printed regulations forbade us to bring books into the mill, so I made my window-seat into a small library of poetry, pasting its side all over with newspaper clippings. In those days we had only weekly papers, and they had always a "poet's corner," where standard writers were well represented, with anonymous ones, also. I was not, of course, much of a critic. I chose my verses for their sentiment, and because I wanted to commit them to memory; sometimes it was a long poem, sometimes a hymn, sometimes only a stray verse. Mrs. Hemans sang with me,-- "Far away, o'er the blue hills far away;" and I learned and loved her "Better Land," and "If thou hast crushed a flower," and "Kindred Hearts." I wonder if Miss Landon really did write that fine poem to Mont Blanc which was printed in her volume, but which sounds so entirely unlike everything else she wrote! This was one of my window-gems. It ended with the appeal,-- "Alas for thy past mystery! For thine untrodden snow! Nurse of the tempest! hast thou none To guard thine outraged brow?" and it contained a stanza that I often now repeat to myself:-- "We know too much: scroll after scroll Weighs down our weary shelves: Our only point of ignorance Is centred in ourselves." There was one anonymous waif in my collection that I was very fond of. I have never seen it since, nor ever had the least clue to its authorship. It stirred me and haunted me; and it often comes back to me now, in snatches like these:--